There are different types of dysautonomia and it would be impossible for us to explain them all here. You may have been doing some reading from other sites and talking to your doctors about dysautonomia and wondering about some of the different names you keep hearing with these disorders. You're not alone! It gets confusing sometimes - even for the medical professionals. There are different names, different conditions, different systems impacted, different terms, and different stages, etc. On top of all that there are the acronyms for each term! To complicate things even more, there is a considerable degree of overlap in these syndromes, and the line between them is often blurred. Most of the kids in DYNA have the diagnosis of Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS) and/or Neurocardiogenic Syncope (NCS), but we also have some kids with different dysautonomia names and conditions. The things we all have in common are more important than our differences, and we are not going to worry about the names and things, we will leave that headache up to the doctors to work out.

People with Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS) and Neurocardiogenic Syncope (NCS) and other autonomic nervous system problems need to drink a lot more fluid than other people and eat a lot more salt. This and certain medications can help them to retain more fluid, which brings up the blood volume and increases blood pressure. Now doctors also have medications that help the blood vessels to constrict (tighten) which helps keep the blood out of the lower half of the body. Many of these patients also get stomach pain because digestion is impacted.

There are many types of treatments and each patient is different. What works for some will not always work for others. People with different types of dysautonomia have varying degrees of symptoms and systems impacted. Each case is like a fingerprint (unique) and therefore these conditions can be very complex for doctors to treat. Old medical books show a history of these types of conditions. But only in the past 10 years have specialists been studying these conditions much closer. Because of these specialists, there is a future for kids with dysautonomia and there is lots of HOPE.